Almost 300,000 children have already been vaccinated across three PNG provinces.

“We know the exercise and we know how to map it out and I think our first round of success allows us to go further to the extra six provinces in the highlands and [in] September-October the rest of the country,” said Sir Puka Temu, the PNG Minister for Health and HIV/AIDS.

Nine provinces will be targeted in the next round of vaccinations.

The country representative for the World Health Organisation in PNG, Dr Luo Dapeng, said there were already a million doses of vaccines in the country and they were working with other agencies to bring in more to complete the future campaigns.

“We are in the process together [with the] National Department of Health, UNICEF, and the Global Polio Eradication Initiative bringing [in] more vaccines.”

The government said delivering the vaccines to remote parts of the country would continue to be a challenge.

The president of the PNG Society of Rural and Remote Health Dr David Milne said keeping the vaccines cold remained one of the biggest barriers to higher vaccination coverage in rural areas.

“They have to be kept cold all along the delivery chain, what they call the cold chain, and cold chain takes some investment particularly in rural areas you obviously don’t always have electricity available.”

Papua New Guinea was declared polio-free 18 years ago.

Changes to visa requirements

Those in PNG applying for a visa to Australia may now be required to provide a vaccination certificate as part of their application.

“These processing arrangements requests a polio vaccination certificate from all visa applicants who have spent 28 days or longer in countries that have the potential to spread the disease internationally, and are listed as polio endemic and outbreak countries, and are applying for a visa from outside of Australia, and are aged six weeks and over,” a spokesperson from the Department of Home Affairs told ABC’s Pacific Beat Program.

“The department … requests a valid vaccination certificate with the visa application to demonstrate the applicant has had their vaccination within the last 12 months.”